Barney Frank: “I do want to make clear the policies that the gentleman from California describes as failed and as doomed are George…”

“I do want to make clear the policies that the gentleman from California describes as failed and as doomed are George Bush's. Now you may think that Obama will do no better. But I do want to be clear. It was the Bush administration officials that asked us to do this. We did modify it some. The only other point I would make is this about oversight. We did write oversight into the bill. The gentlewoman says, well, oversight was after the fact. But oversight is always after the fact. The oversight function is to see what has been done and report on it. That is what the Oversight Committee does. In this case, we put in good oversight. The Government Accountability Office reported early on that they weren't monitoring how the loan money was being spent. And we had a hearing to talk about that. And then the Elizabeth Warren panel talked about it. So our decision to tell the Bush administration to stop and not even ask for the $350 billion until we got a new shot at it came based on information we got from the oversight panels that we put into the bill.”